The eternal Hindu Muslim Divide and other myths (September 9, 2007)

Column for 9^th September 2007

An English journalist visiting the Silicon Valley asked a group of Indian NRI’s whether they were still resentful of the British intrusion and occupation. The group was all Hindu. Like all Indians who do not want to say things unpleasant for the hearer they demurred and made inoffensive and uncontroversial noises about there being two sides -- that it was not all bad.

Even this group were surprised when one of their number said that it was good that the British came when they did as if they had not come then all of India would be Muslim by now. The speaker was an educated person with a technical degree.

This myth has been with us for some time. A number of Bengali Hindus in the 19^th century, including the Brahmo leader Keshub Chandra Sen earned the goodwill and support of their British masters by subscribing to this untruth. Sen himself could not be rewarded-- by being raised to royalty. His daughter could and was—by a British Political Office arranged marriage into a minor princely household. The continuing- to- be--lionized Maharani Gayatri Devi is descended from Keshub Chundra Sen. The Maharaja of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi’s husband is said to have proclaimed that he would not fight for India. He, however, would show his loyalty by obeying any summons the British Crown.

The descendents of the quislings of 1857 like the Scindias of Gwalior and the Dogras of J&K continuing to enjoy power and live in luxury ensures that distortions in history continue. No one worries about the fate of the descendents of Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and a host of other freedom fighters.

The distortion of Indian history by British historians and their Indian successors like Jadunath Sarkar (he was knighted for his efforts by the British) continues uncorrected. We are to believe

• that the Hindus and Muslims were at each other’s throats from 1192-1857
• That the Mughals lived in luxury while their subjects starved
• That India was always poor.

The facts are clear and unambiguous. Communal riots are a phenomenon beginning with British rule and continuing thereafter--there were none before British rule began. In May 1857 the ‘Pandys’ ( as the British called the Mutineers) came all the way from Meerut to Delhi shouting ‘Deen’ ‘Deen’ (FAITH, FAITH) as for them Deen and Dharam meant one and the same thing.

They asked Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ an 82vyear old man who had no experience of war-- no money or soldiery- to lead them despite their being Hindu and his being Muslim. When he pointed out that he could not help with either men or money they said that all they wanted was his name and his blessings.

The Mughals did live in luxury unsurpassed to this day. The peasantry did not starve because the rulers took away all surplus as happened under the British. ‘There was a characteristic of the Mughal tax system that raised the peasants’ and herders’ net income and partly protected India’s ecology. Abul Fazl’s Ain laid down ‘ that if a man kept under pasture such land as was liable to land revenue…. A tax of six dams per buffalo or three per cow (or bullock) was to be levied. But a cultivator owning upto four bullocks, two cows and one buffalo to each plough was exempt.

Moreover no tax was to be levied from goshalas or herds of cows kept for religious and charitable purposes.’

Pastures were exempt and taxes raised were a low amount per animal. As a result ‘butter with rice formed the food of the common man and there was no one in Agra who did not eat it. Similarly in Bengal butter was produced in such plenty that besides being part of everyone’s diet it was exported along with sugar and rice.

Before Plassey (1757) Bengal was the most prosperous and dynamic economy in the world. It sent a revenue of one crore silver rupees (40 dams to the rupee) to Awrungzeyb in all the thirty years he remained embattled in the Deccan fighting the Sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda and then the Marathas. Bagchi states ‘India under Mughal rule and after’ that

“Piecing all these fragments of evidence together, it is fair to conclude that the rate of growth of Indian income in the Mughal and the immediately pre-colonial period very probably matched, if not exceeded the long run rate of demographic growth in India during earlier centuries’.

It is time the Mughals were taken off the black square of self indulgent communalists and seen for what they were. The British want Indians to look upon them as an earlier and worse version of exploiters and distort history to prove their point. Their interpretation continues to divide and fragment Indian society and must be dismissed.